Absolute Zero
by spearmintsparrows
Summary: The Doctor is mysteriously called to the lair of a new breed of Weeping Angels in pursuit of an engraved coffin. Little does he know its importance not only to the Angels, but the universe and himself. He's at absolute zero, with a grim forecast ahead.
1. The Stone Choir's Queen

**A/N So I'm a late recruit to the little universe of Doctor Who, and I've just done the fifth series. I did some extra research as well so I can pay my due respects to the older series and doctors I haven't seen and their storylines. This will be mostly the eleventh doctor, with possibly some flashbacks, all set in a modified eleventh doctor universe (for convenience). I'll try to cover all my bases and keep everyone as in character as I'm able. Enjoy C:**

Shapes spilled around me, from in front or behind my eyelids I could not tell. Was I even alive? I wasn't so sure. I might be sleeping. I might be floating. Maybe this was what it felt like to be erased from time. Why was it taking so long, then? I'd been suspended in this state for…years. Years were not adequate. I was sure it was decades, if not millennia. How did I know this? I'd forgotten who I'd been, just five syllables streaming along a time loop in my mind. Sleeping, spilling darkness…there was a chain around my throat, a leash strung along by the multiverse. There was a constant whisper in my head, a song. A thousand voices together, singing about sleep and hunger. I was bleeding, edging…

Noise. There was noise. This was important, because noise meant something to who I used to be. The echo of that identity wanted to hear more of it, to strain my soul until the sound filled me up and made me whole. Did I even have a body to strain? Ears to listen? I wasn't so sure. I hadn't been sure of much of anything in a very long time. I did all I could. I lay. Lay until the sound could find me of its own accord, to rest the discontent beast this vessel clung to, to inspire me to long something outside this silent hold.

There was shouting. Screaming, actually. The sounds of what I remembered to be people, being torn apart. By what? What sat atop, beneath, below my unraveling self?

"Keep your eyes _open, _for God's sake if you want to _live!"_

"We've lost three more!"

"We've got to get into the chamber!"

"How do we do that? There's a whole coven of them lying across the box!"

"We're going to have to approach them. And turn off the lights." A calm voice in all the chaos. The cadence tickled something in the back of my conscious, or the afterimage of it. There was something there, beating beneath my surface. How long had these noises been within my prison? Was I being thrown back through time, just a stop between my life and my birth, before all testimony to my existence failed?

"Are you _insane?"_

"That's the popular theory. But if you want to get out of this alive _and _with the box, we can't risk playing it safe."

Time passed.

Time.

It still existed?

"One, two, three."

Silence.

One, two, three…

Screaming. Loud, raw screaming that sounded even heavier than the stone chorus in my head, no longer singing sleep and hunger but anger and death. Something red clutched at me, my new skin wanted to tear and burn.

And then a more restful silence.

"Everyone okay?"

"I've got one at my ankle!"

"That's okay then. Shoo it off. We've got approximately ten minutes to pull this off. You, there! Yes. Keep spinning like that. Just don't look so sick. Keep an eye on them, all of them."

"They've gone from the box. Not far, but they're not lying on top of it any more. D'you think we can move it now?"

"No asking, just doing. We've got to hurry this up."

Murmurs.

"One, two, three…"

This time the noise was personal, too close. My old skin shifted, ached towards the noise. The rest of me felt—and wasn't that a wonder, I hadn't consciously felt in so long—primal, afraid. Uncertain.

"There she goes!" An excited chatter went around…whatever, was out there. In here?

And abruptly silence fell. I was so used to silence, I'd spoken it so long. This one told me of shock, of wary hearts beating under prickled skin.

"What…is she?"

Footsteps echoed blindly as a shadow darker than the rest kissed the spills of blank colour spooling restlessly somewhere in relation to my eyes.

"It can't be…in all the verses, it's impossible…"

"You know it?"

"No…no, that I don't."

"Well, what is it?"

"I think, in a moment, she'll tell us herself."

There was _light. _I'd been so focused on the shadows, another language I spoke so fluently, that I hadn't noticed the _light. _Until that moment, I'd forgotten what light was. It was vibrant, so vibrant…it woke and bent and caressed every little nerve. My eyes opened slowly, surely against the strange pale downpour of beautiful matter. Faces. Faces existed! How long had there been faces outside? How long had I had a body? I realized then, too, that I definitely had one of those. The light reawakened it, spurred it to feel, see, hear, _everything. _But I couldn't move. I was trapped in my body, which was trapped in a box. There were carvings along the sides, more faces. Horrible faces. Faces I recognized from my dreams. The stone chorus watched me as I slept.

I grimaced against the revelation, the light, the chains wrapped around my wrists, everything. Eyes, not mine, but dozens above, watched my every expression, movement. They waited. The old skin shivered, wary, and the new was at a loss. I had no reference for this. No reference for living. But I was no longer asleep, and there was light and sounds and breath. There was a man with dark hair, who was surrounded by a different light than the others.

"Can you speak?"

I gazed at him, stoic and unsure now that I was most definitely not unspooling in a pocket of the multiverse.

"Just as well. You're certainly not what we expected to uncover here, are you?" He seemed unable to look away. What form had I taken? Was I exotic, or so unseemly it was hard to tear away any attentions I acquired? "How rude of me, sorry. You must be confused as well. You see—"

At the pit of my stomach—I had one of those, too—I had a craving outside of the stone chorus singing me anger and death, despair and ruin. I had a craving for something round and sweet, purple? It was at the tip of my tongue….Plums. I wanted plums.

"I'm the Doctor."


	2. On a OneWay Street to Escape

The men talked for awhile as I lay in my tomb, unable to do much more than think and breathe. I was alive. I had a body. There was still a world out there, and I had a means to live in it. The choir was a low hum on the peripherals of my brain. I had the luxury of being worried. The feel of emotion, smooth and sliding around my heart in a frantic tumult, was something beautiful even in its dark rarity.

"Well, what do we do with her?"

"We can't just turn her in like this."

"D'you think he knew she was in here?"

"He had to. He _sent us _for it."

"The box. He sent us for a box. Not a _person."_

"We don't even know if she _is _a person. For all we know, she could be some creepy alien chick doomsday weapon."

"Not our judgment call, boys. She's humanoid. This is doesn't settle well in my stomach at all."

"Well." The man, the self-proclaimed Doctor, spoke up at last. "Unchain her. Don't forget your manners, boys. Maybe she'll fill us in on all the dirty little secrets once we give her a reason not to be wary of us." He said the words lightly, acting for the entire world as if I wasn't there at all. The old skin was human enough to be offended.

Ultimately, they decided to free me. I didn't know if that was wise, but I was all for it. They used strange tools that manipulated straight-cut energy fields, fizzing out the bonds until all that was left were a loose hoop of silver chaining around my neck and small circles on my wrists and ankles. The Doctor offered his hand to help me up. I looked at his pale fingers, so warm in the light. I ignored them. I hoisted myself up and out. My feet gave way as my world tipped vertical and I avoided the hands that reached to steady me, instead relying on the side of my coffin.

"I forgot how to walk." I whispered to myself, surprised at the sound of my own voice. It was light like stars but deep with adulthood. How old was I, again? Since Julian…I was so caught up in my stunted reverie I barely noticed the sudden still once I was mobile and talking. I briefly felt all eyes on me—both organic and stone—before I turned my attention back to my own fingers. They were long and soft under thick gloves. Gloves that were black and stuck to my skin with tight metal rings. I remembered so little, but suddenly I remembered what I was. They travelled along my arm, my neck, up to my face, rediscovering myself.

"I have hair." I said in awe. I allowed myself to be amazed for a few more seconds before my eye was caught by an inscription on the side of my tomb. It was ornate, inscribed in the language of things best left in the dark. 'Charge of the Angels'. I ran my finger over it once, the grooves of it sparking my fingertips. Nothing. No sudden click of the puzzle pieces of my life falling together in my memory. I did, however, have a scientific, if not personal, knowledge of the Angels. I turned slowly, all too aware now what the stone choir in my head had been for so long. A scene that surely would have been in my nightmares had I been capable of them for all those years lay before my eyes. Rows. Statues upon statue, a colony of elemental beasts that resided in every corner of the vast chamber. We were in a cave. A cave at the heart of the lair of the Weeping Angels. What had we done to so upset the heavens?

I finally brought myself to address the strangers. In light of where and how we were, I made a snapshot decision to rely on them to get me out of here. Never trust.

"Are you the ones who put me here?" I asked the Doctor, the one with the speculative eyes but that odd, odd light the others lacked.

"We are the ones who were sent to get you."

"Why?"

"At this point, I was hoping you'd know, actually. You, my dear, were largely left out of our job description."

"You came for my box." I said assuredly. "Who put me in it?"

"We don't know that, either."

"You don't know a lot, then, do you? You took a job from someone you don't know, to get a mysterious box you obviously have as much information about?" I sounded skeptical. Probably rude. But after my extended purgatory in that fateful box, thinking I was deader each day, I deserved a little righteous expression. "Not wise." I closed my eyes, centered myself. I took strong strides away from the cursed prism, walking past one of the many men stationed around the room, staring unwaveringly into the cold hearts of the Angels.

"I didn't come here alone." The thought struck me quickly midstep.

"I don't….I'm not sure. There were four of them, I think. I knew three. Where are they? Where are the others?"

"There are more boxes over here." Called one of the interchangeable men draped in camouflage colours. The lead of the military men, the one to the left of the Doctor, took a few steps forward. I beat him to it.

"Open these." My voice was urgent. I had no bearings for anything in this skin, but the instincts from my time before the box were there. I could feel. And I felt _afraid. _

"Wait a second. We don't know what's in those, and whatever is, it's definitely _not _on our shopping list." The head man asserted.

"Do it." The Doctor. "If there are more trapped people inside of these and you don't free them, you'll never be able to forgive yourselves. I'll make sure of it."

Resigned, the man gave a few short orders and seven men were pulling at the heavy lids. In a few minutes, they were off. Inside laid two people with bodies just like me. Except these two people were dead. Irrevocably so. They were little more than skeletons, curled in on themselves. I didn't know them. I was sure of it. Still, the sight of their decrepit, sad shells tug and tore at me until tears fell wild and unrestrained down my cheeks, splashing across the backs of my gloves. An inhuman cry was dragged out of me, stained red with the blood on the hands of the man who sacrificed us to the Angels. The Doctor came to my side, wise enough to speak but not touch.

"Are these your companions?" He asked with a tone pitched low. I was immune to his impersonal comforts. "Is that why you're crying?"

"No…I don't know…I don't _know _them! Why do I care?" Plaintive. Fragile. These were not traits of the being I recalled so vaguely. I was distracted then by the unearthly wail of Angels, causing my skull such pain I believed wholeheartedly it would collapse in on itself. "Oh _Maker. _Get out…get out!" I clutched my head, fell to my knees and kept my cheek to the frigid floor.

"What is it?"

"They're screaming. The Angels are."

"You can hear them?"

"We have to go. All of us. Now. Take me with you, just _out. _That far."

"We've got—"

"We've got to _go. _I'll talk. I'll talk to you if you take me away from here. And them." I pointed to the stone caskets. "No one deserves to live and die with the Angels. No one deserves that kind of eternity."

No one would keep prey to the Angels, or to any other miserable nightmare wrapped plain and gray in the universe. I was weak and I was lost. But I was awake.


	3. Dying Stars and Sugar Plum Dreams

I sat in the back passenger hold of a large aircraft, fingers clenched around the edges of a borrowed blanket and staring straight ahead. They hadn't bothered much in the way of hospitality since they shepherded me onto their ship. I assumed they were holed up in some conference room testing the waters for the exact degree of turbulent bad juju they had crash landed in. I was lost in all the blank holes of my memory and the time that had passed by largely unnoticed. Lost in the thought of plums.

I shuddered alert as the hold's door opened in a clinical shift, admitting both the Doctor and the lead of the men in fatigues.

"Are you up for a chat?" The Doctor asked distantly. I was glad he wasn't any real physician of mine, given his bedside manner, or apparent lack thereof.

"Not him." I closed my eyes, leaning back against the cold metal of the venting panels.

"I'm the head of this mission. If anyone, I'm the one with the most right and need to be caught up with whatever damn rabbit hole our employer just threw us down." His voice was mild but adamant, full of all the human trappings of indignity.

I opened my eyes. "Don't tell me about rights, boy. I'm not the one who signed myself up for being locked in a coffin, nor am I the one who signed myself up to retrieve the girl in the coffin. It's not I who might be serving evil in this. I will choose who gets to know what little of this story I know, and I do not choose you."

"Boy?" He muttered contemptuously. I rolled my eyes at the part of my speech he chose to focus on.

"I assume you didn't live for all the centuries I was locked in there." I raised my eyebrows.

"Centuries?"

"What year is it?"

"3278, Cycle A."

"Centuries. Go. Please. I'll let the Doctor fill you in on anything he deems relevant to your mission." My throat began to feel the strain of centuries of disuse.

He looked unhappy about it, but he obliged. I returned my attentions to the Doctor.

"What are you going to do with me?"

"That's what they're deciding now, actually. I just left because I got bored." He took the seat across from me, meeting my eyes. "Entertain me."

"The others, they're safe?"

"I assume you don't mean the men sent to get you."

"I mean my people. The ones from the tomb."

"I thought we established you absolutely didn't know them."

"They were trapped in that place with me. They're my people now."

He gave me a curious look. Maybe he understood a little.

"They're safe. If I ask you questions-and there's a lot of them—will you answer them?"

"I don't know." I answered truthfully. "Try."

"What all do you remember?"

I thought back. All I could recall was the endless expanse of time slipping around me, there were holes, there too, and moments of light…travel. I remembered moving through that space, never quite fully aware, but always surrounded by singing and stars. What was I doing out there, lacking oxygen and purpose? I smoothed my fingertips over my gloves, trying to recall the reason I knew I could never take them off.

"Not much. I remember being in space a lot, traversing galaxies even as I slept. I think…I think that was real. I don't know how or why or what I did. I don't know if I wanted to. I don't think I decided that." I picked at the rings on the gloves, wincing as pain inspired me to stop.

"We'll get back to that later, then. Do you remember what you are?"

"What are you?" I asked. Maybe I had a light of my own.

He leaned forward, speaking conspiringly. "I'm a Time Lord."

My breath caught a little and suddenly the light had meaning. "You seem too sad to be one."

"Well, until this morning, I was just thinking what a pity that I'm the last of them."

My eyes widened. "No. That can't be. They were…they were something great still, when I was alive last."

"All good things must come to an end. In their case, they weren't even that good." He visibly shifted tracks, returned to his line of questioning. The burn of his gaze paled back into something objective. "But enough bedtime stories. What are you?"

"I was a Time Lord too, once." I whispered. "That and something else."

"Something else?" I could tell the Time Lord bit meant something to him, but I couldn't discern exactly what. All I knew was he was affected under his stoic mask.

I flexed my hands, causing the fabric of the gloves to ripple. "Something else." I said soberly.

"Do you have a name?"

"I don't know." I searched my brain, trying out a million syllables strung together to form titles from all the races I'd ever encountered. Only five struck a chord, resounding over and over in a cycle I didn't understand. "Evainarcelair."

"That's a mouthful."

I shot him a wry look. "Because I named myself, right?"

"Fair enough. So it's obvious you have a serious memory block, which is obviously not helpful in the least. Do you at least know who put you in there?"

"No. And I'm not sure whether I want to run from him or kill him." Maybe it wasn't the sanest thing to say, but it certainly felt righteous. "Do you have any plums, Doctor?"

"Plums?"

"I have this strangest feeling like plums are the answer to everything right now. Humour me? I haven't eaten in presumably…well, certainly since the last millennium."

"I guess you've earned that much. I'm going to call you Ev, by the way. It's too much trouble to pronounce that hellhound of a name you have."

"…I don't think I like that."

"Smashing. I don't think I care." His expression was such that I was both exceedingly annoyed and amused. I wondered how old he was to be acting like such a kid. He came back within a few minutes and extended his hand, offering up a small purple fruit.

I bit into it absently. The taste was overwhelming at first, being the first thing I'd eaten in so long. But it was the feeling that came with it that caught me unawares. Images flashed before my eyes, 8-bit memories I couldn't adequately process. The tirade finally melted into one solid memory, a message.

"Oh." I murmured, watching the juice tremble down onto my gloved fingers. "I see."

"What was that?"

"It makes sense now. More sense. Temporal, frontal, hippocampus." I gestured to each place in my skull with vague movements. "I have the last, and some of the middle. It's the first that's all blown to bits, but I know why. Kind of. That man, he took my memories before he put me in there. I'm supposed to be little more than a vessel right now, I suppose. But as they unraveled, I rewired things. I…copied my hard drive. I stored each memory, connected it to an experience."

"So what else is there?"

"I don't know. That's all there was in the plum. That was the first failsafe. I left the knowledge of what happened, and how to fix it. I don't know what the next is, but I'll know when I experience it. I think there are other things in the plum, surface memories, the ones that don't matter much. They'll fade back in." I concentrated, trying to find another lead in the jumble of this and that that tried to merge my old skin with the new. "…I was born fourteen hundred years after the David Cycle on Earth. I don't remember what that means to my planet."

"You're old."

"Older than you, I imagine. How old _is _that?"

"Has anyone told you it's rude to ask a man his age? Oh right, you probably forgot that. Nine hundred and seven."

"Cute. You're a schoolboy. " My eyes drifted shut.

"Is that a dismissal?"

"I like purple. It's my favourite colour. I remember that now. I'm so tired, Doctor…I'm not used to functioning anymore." I pulled the blanket tighter, curling into the seat. "I just learned half my heritage died while I was with the Angels. I need to escape for awhile. Can I trust you to protect me so long as I sleep?"

"I don't think it's wise to trust anyone at this point."

"Just don't give me to that man. Not like this." The next words came out slurred, already half-drowne d in dreams and things I almost remembered. "He'll feed me to the stars."


	4. In Sickness and in Health

I don't know how long I slept, nor how much of that sleep was dream or memory. It seemed everything in my life revolved around sleep, dreams, and memories now. And feelings. I suppose those were important, too, given the strength they showed when they finally reawakened completely. I was afraid a lot as I was asleep, and angry. There was a rabid, vengeful despair weighing down my heart and I no matter how far my little dream feet ran, I could never completely escape the singing. This time it wasn't just the Angels. There was something else calling me in the night, things wrapped in a light that far outshone both mine and the Doctor's. It was as primeval as time itself. What did that mean to a Time Lord, a Star Thief? I ran through a maze of shadowed figures and stone bodies, every corridor ending abruptly with a skeleton or a man cloaked in red. I knew these people. Somehow, I did. I knew them as much as I knew I liked purple, and that I was slowly starving.

The 8-bit images trundled along a steel path in my brain, telling me things I used to know. I wore knee-high socks for the first century of my life. I never graduated my culture's university. It was because I was an outcast, a crossbreed…who were my parents? My family? Was I an orphan, now, too? Or had I been one all along? The new information only added to my pile of insecurities. I turned a corner in the labyrinth, stopping in a heart-clenching second before I fell. There was a black hole mere feet from me, and by all accounts I should have been dead much farther away. Instead, my hair, pale blond in the light of the nightmare, stole across my face and towards the abyss. I had the oddest feeling of nostalgia before a tremulous wail resounded throughout my skull. At first I thought the black hole was serenading me, but then I realized it was the Angels screaming me awake.

"We've got to go."

I shot up from my position sprawled across two seats, gazing at the Doctor in confusion. "What?"

"Now. We've got to go, now. They've made their decision, and I don't like it."

"Oh, it's a bad one, then, huh?"

"They've got Sleeping Beauty syndrome, the lot of them. They're betting our employer's kept you in there as a safety measure or something, that he's your knight in shining armor. They just want clean consciences."

"They're afraid."

"Sounds like you're the one who should be afraid."

"Oh, I am." I was. The remnants from my dream were on repeat inside my head. Every nerve and muscle felt alive, emotions heightened in a very dangerous manner. "That's not going to help either of us."

"Probably not. So, are you coming or are you staying? Because we've got approximately three minutes to get out of here."

"Three minutes?"

"I kind of stepped on a few toes on the way down here."

"You what?"

"Well, there were a couple men on duty, and I offered them a fair bit of hand to hand, but they started firing their lasers. And that was just underhanded. So I stepped on their toes. Literally. And I threw things at them."

"Things?"

"Heavy things."

He was completely serious. I shook my head at the whole sordid situation and –almost—wished I was back in the tomb. Things didn't make a degree more of sense there, but at least they didn't involve so much energy and uncertainty.

"Right then. Coming?" He licked his lips and offered me his hand. I stared at it. "Two minutes, now. I mean, you're choosing between two madmen here, but at least one of us didn't lock you in a box for over half your life. That one's me by the way. The one who _didn't _lock you in the box." He gestured to himself with his thumb. The sound of feet thundered from somewhere above and the Doctor bent down, took my hand, and began to run. "Just kidding. You don't get to decide anymore."

I gasped at the feel of his hand in mine. The second trigger. Actually, it felt out of place, like I'd skipped the beginning of a story and fallen straight into the middle. Those memories came with it. I didn't have time to process them as I was thrown into a mad chase filled with guns and shouting. I let the Doctor pull me along as I had no knowledge of the ship's layout. I knew well enough not to bother asking questions in the middle of the chaos, and trusted the Doctor far enough to take me out of this place.

"Fowl!" He shouted all of a sudden as we turned a corner.

"What?" I screamed back as a flash of blue narrowly missed my face. I cried out an expletive in a language that was decidedly not English.

"I said _duck_!"

"You're insane!"

"The best of us are." He tugged me around a final corner and I was expecting gunfire, blood, pain—

-and got a dark blue box instead. 'Police Box' was painted across the top and there was a series of panels around the whole thing. The Doctor flung open the door and threw me down inside, closing it with a bang and dashing off into the…horribly huge interior. The place would undoubtedly corrupt a human mind. They couldn't process the mismatch between the outside and the in. I, however, was enamored with it, the sight reconciling itself with one of my latest recovered memories. I was a traveler. Before I walked space in the box, I had purposely gone on my own quests in a…Maker, what did I travel in? _It was like this. Something like this. _There were people with me, too. The backlog of memories revived by holding the Doctor's hand bled through as he powered up whatever strange machine we were in.

"Wait!" I shouted, the sound reverberating around the waking machine.

"What now?"

"The others! We can't leave them there. We can't let that man have them."

"We don't have time."

"How can you say that? Who else is going to save them?"

"They hardly need _saving." _The Doctor said. "They're d_ead. _I doubt he's got many opportunities to make their lack of lives any _worse." _

My breath caught at his bluntness. I made a rash move to strike him and he caught my wrist.

"Not cute." He said in a low, too calm tone. "I know you're going through this whole morbid amnesia ordeal, but recall who just saved you?" He began to point a finger toward me, then tapped it on his own nose. "So let's play nice Miss Ev."

"You overstep yourself, Doctor." I murmured. "I overstep myself, too. Remember though, since it seems I'm not the only one with a memory lapse; you are a mere fledging in this universe. I am related to far more things far more verses than you. Don't forget that." We locked stares for a few beats before I finished. "Thank you. For saving me. You're naïve, and you're kind of a grump. But you've got a bittersweetness to you. I appreciate that." I stepped away from him, circling the immediate space around the center module of the craft. "I'm sorry, too. Because I'm sure neither of us know the half of what we were just plunged into."

There were lights all around me. I was so tired of lights, but they kept finding me wherever I went. I didn't know where I was now. I was somewhere warm, lying between spires of metal with a coat draped over me in lieu of a blanket. I had the disorienting feeling like the time sickness I used to get as a child. There was a symphony in my head, primeval bodies singing floral notes, the chords of stars. There were darker voices, too, logged in want and disdain. I pulled myself up, walking around the strange place I'd been thrown into. Astral bodies danced before me, threatening to swallow me whole. I circled around them in awe. I recognized their faces.

"Arcadia, Gacrux, Dubhe, Cynosora, Tabit, Mirach." I whispered their names as I passed them, aware of their spilling bright coils lacing their way through the air to me. Their voices were the ones of purity. Just as they came as individuals, they came in families. Andromeda, Caelum, Pyxis, Orion and Vela spun around me, greeting me like the old friends they were. These were the faces of the New Age. The ghosts of legacies such as the Korlasinox Spin wavered in the air, almost there but not quite. Apheminian, Laros, Calgarith, Mairnoch. These were the ones that died and were given a second life in my people. The stars were our friends and prey, as much as we were to them.

I walked through them, tasting their light as I came to a sliver of a star. A baby. It was so small, and I was so hungry, so tired. I bent over it, cupped its light in my hands. My hands. Why were they covered? It was shameful. I tugged at them, pulled until steel tore through my flesh. I ignored the pain. Everything was wrong, so wrong. Eventually I gave in, gave up. I was bleeding, and I couldn't risk my hands. The star was really so small, tiny enough I didn't need my hands for it. I brought it to my lips and the chaos of the impure voices erupted in an unearthly cry. Tears found their way down my face, and they were made of stone. I brushed them away and they left scrapes on my knuckles.

"Ev?"

I turned to the voice. A male figure approached, looking towards me at once in confusion and interest. I stared at him a moment, matching his gaze in both its odd sentiments.

"Grithith?" A virus of joy took hold of my heart, and I closed my fingers around the star. I squeezed once, then gave mercy to the thing. I let it go. It owed me a debt now. If ever I lay broken in its quadrant of the multiverse, it would return me my due.

"Ev, are you alright?"

The concern in his voice caused me to tremble. "Of course I am. I am now. I missed you so much, Grith. I don't even know why…" I broke off, looking back at the crown of stars, brow furrowed. "It was only yesterday we travelled to your planet."

"You don't know where you are, do you? You're shaking." He stepped closer, reaching out to me.

"What are you wearing?" I asked, distantly looking him up and down. "You don't like bow ties. Are you playing a joke on Astryn?"

"I think you should sit, Ev." He felt my forehead. "You're burning."

"My wick is burning. I've got to eat, Grith." My focus warped, black peaking at the edges. The stars flexed like third planet holograms. "Why are you calling me that? Ev."

"What do I usually call you, then?"

I gave him an odd look. "Evvie. Are you okay, Grith? I feel like I haven't seen you in forever…the real kind, y'know. Not that pale concept from your home."

"Do you remember who I am? Do you remember who the Doctor is?"

"Doctor? I don't need a doctor. I'm fine. Too fine. Aren't you fine? We're both fine."

"We're really, really not."

"They found me." I whispered suddenly, because they had. Their voices raked through me, livid, pulling me from the stars and towards a place I didn't want to go. They told me to hurt Grithith, to break until there was no breath, no pulse…I refused and they hurt me for it. I screamed.

"Who are they? Who are they, Ev? What are they doing?" He was shouting now. He sounded like he was angry at me. What had I done?

My limbs became weightless, my eyes sightless, my voice useless. I became less. I refused, and they switched me off.


	5. A Recipe for Stone Soup and Star Travel

"Feeling better now?"

I gazed up blearily at the voice. The Doctor passed off a steaming cup to me and I took it with reservations. Inside, strong black liquid swirled in on itself. I tasted it. The tea was so overwhelming, I struggled not to spit it out, but instead swallowed the sugarless mass in a display of gratitude.

"I'm still upset about the others, if that's what you mean. But I'll manage. I think we both know I haven't given up on them. If not, you do now."

"I meant last night, actually."

"Last night?"

"You don't remember at all, do you?"

"I don't remember a lot of things. Isn't that the problem?"

"Who's Grithith?" He asked, clearly driving the conversation into a specific direction.

"Grithith?" The name fell off my tongue, foreign. "Is he a friend of yours?"

He gazed at me as if I lacked all signs of intelligence.

"Never mind. You wouldn't be asking, then, would you. I don't know anybody. You know that. Or at least, I don't recall anybody I do know."

The Doctor pulled at his bow tie in an absent, busy motion. "Well, let me tell you a story then. It's the story about how last night you were wandering about the TARDIS with a high fever, calling out constellations. You thought I was someone named Grithith, and then you collapsed."

"That's odd." I said redundantly.

"Oh, really?" He said humourlessly.

"I don't know what to tell you. I haven't been—TARDIS, did you say? That's what it was." I closed my eyes, trying to bring back the sensation of travelling I'd had before. I'd traveled in a machine much like this. A TARDIS. "Anyhoo. I haven't been in one of these for a very long time. I haven't _moved _for a very long time. It's space sickness, and it's passed."

"You've been in one of these before?"

"Yes. I remembered that yesterday after I—" I changed the sentence midstream, not wanting to reveal holding his hand was the second trigger. It was such a silly trigger, why would I choose that? Maybe it was the simple displacement of air I'd chosen, to touch a living thing. Even the Angels would have sufficed. That made more sense. "—managed to not die in your horrible escape attempt."

"You're not exactly a shining picture of gratitude, are you?"

I shrugged. "I've been locked in a box for presumably hundreds of years. I'm grumpy. What do you want from me?"

He measured me a moment, and that was all it took for me to know he wasn't convinced by my lies. I wasn't okay. It wasn't space sickness, I had no idea what it was. I truly didn't remember a thing about last night, and I didn't know a Grithith. That only made my heart beast faster with fear and the pale gray sickness I felt inside grow.

"Where are we going?"

"Somewhere safe. I'm thinking Earth. Everybody likes to mess with Earth."

"And that makes it safe?"

"Safer than our other current options, which include cannibals and Amazonian witch doctors. He put a reward up for you, y'know. He wants you back very badly."

"I don't even know who he _is. _Wait. He put a poster out? For bounty?" I started to panic, then realized it was stupid. Of course the sick beast would want me back. I was an investment worth multiple lifetimes. "What does it look like?"

"You." There was that condescending look again.

"I don't know what I look like." I mused out loud. I'd never bothered for a mirror or anything since I'd been unearthed. Maybe I wasn't vain. That was a nice thought.

"Here, then." He handed me a small metal device and I met my own eyes—for all intents and purposes—for the first time. They were grey.

They were the weirdest shade of grey I'd ever seen, fading from bright as celestial bodies to dark as endless vortexes. I knew they were the mark of my kind. I had pale blonde hair, the kind that's almost white. It looked knit from stars. It seemed everything about me, from the timid freckles in constellations across my alabaster cheeks to the half-moon pattern of scars above one eye, revolved around stars. I wondered where the Time Lord in me lay, which brought me to think of regeneration.

"Why didn't I die?" I asked aloud. It seemed I shouldn't have this face. It felt…lived in. The Doctor chose to answer.

"How do you mean?"

"I was in that chamber with the Angels for so long, I should have starved." The very word itself gnawed at my stomach, and I had to think that my sickness was spreading. My muscles felt like stone under my skin, like the effort to move them would snap me in two.

"You said you travelled, right?"

"Right."

"So maybe they threw you. They do that, y'know. They could have been kept alive by throwing you into different times, and pulling you back in again."

"But how…they'd need a, a leash."

I witnessed a mad light in his eyes then, that told me his mind was thinking very important things at a very fast rate.

"A link. That's it. The missing link. They must have created a link with you, a psychic one. One they could push you away and bring you back with, even with you in your comatose state."

"That's sick."

"The Angels aren't particularly known for their love of snuggling, writing children's' books, and doing things accepted by civilized society."

"How do I break it?"

"That…is a splendid question. If you've satisfied yourself that you're pretty—" He took the device from my hands and aimed it back at me.

"What is that?"

"Sonic screwdriver."

"And you're going to?" I asked as the little device silently bathed me in a new type of light. I made an involuntary and embarrassingly girly noise, flinching. "And you did that because?"

"I wanted to see if you'd have an entirely wimpy reaction. You did." He smiled like a kid who was both thoroughly entertained and amused by his cleverness. "Oh, and I thought it might be prudent to take a few medical scans, see if we can fix your little dependency issue in a jiffy."

I glowered at him. "And the prognosis is?"

"You have very bad grammar for such an old thing." He said brightly. "I have no idea. Your physiology is something the screwdriver's never recorded before. I find that dreadfully intriguing."

"Delightful. Maybe if it asks me like a gentleman, we can get to know each other over a cup of tea." I rolled my eyes.

"It's not very experienced with women. He might find your horridly shifting emotions and weakly veiled sarcasm confusing and short circuit."

"You might want to do the same." I moved to get up and he stood with me, all cheeriness drained into worry. It was bothersome, but nice to see him thawing out.

"I'm not going to keel over. I've waited too long for this to let a little motion sickness ruin it for me." I walked passed him, looking around the TARDIS in renewed awe and purpose.

"What are you doing?" The Doctor followed me as I touched every surface respectfully.

"I'm trying to catch a trigger off it. My vessel…it was something so close to this." The image was pulling at the back of my brain. "It looked like a million things. A new shape each day, I think. I carried it around with me as a tea cup once. It was my father's TARDIS, from his time before….before something bad happened to him."

"Are you telling me everything you know?"

"Are you telling me everything you know?"

"No."

"No. Glad we're being honest."

"You're telling me the important things, though, right?"

I glanced at him briefly as I traced a row of keys. "I'm telling you the things that will keep us alive." I reached a portrait hanging from a thin loop of wire. It held a picture of two people smiling, a man with happy, mousy brown hair and a woman with bright red hair. Their hair was being blown by wind as they sat down and coveted her round stomach. "Who are they?"

The Doctor's focus dimmed a bit, laden with experiences and attachments involving the fledgling family in the portrait, I supposed.

"They were my companions. My last ones."

"They're not…?"

"My line of work isn't infant-friendly." The Doctor said shortly. I couldn't tell where the jealousy, pain, and anger in his voice were directed at. The loneliness, however, was all-consuming.

"You didn't replace them?"

"No one replaces my companions." I felt like my words were shredding the small bond we'd developed as common refugees. I wanted to pull them back in, but my insides were stuffed full of pain and confusion now. There was a track on repeat in my head, and I suddenly felt both violent and violently ill.

"I think I used to understand." I murmured distractedly. My mind was back to the triggers, now, since the voices in my head reminded me of my little stone house. "I think it's something from the chamber. Something I would have found when I woke up. What all was there?"

"Angels. Sediment. Blood. Gems. Stone—"

"Stone!"

"Stone?"

"Yes, yes, yes. It has to be stone. I would have touched stone if I'd had my thoughts together."

"You touched your casket."

"Ah—" That threw me off for a minute before I thought of the crux of my stay in the chamber. "But it's other senses too. First taste, then touch. It could be any sense. A sense about stone."

"You don't think you have to eat a stone…?" The Doctor's face drew in disgusted interest and I pushed on his shoulder with playful force.

"I think…I think I have to _hear _a stone!"

The Doctor produced a rock after rummaging around in some drawer. I looked at it intently for too long, because he began bouncing from foot to foot slowly. "Well then, give her a go!"

I held the stone loosely in my hand and let it fall to the floor. A beat of silence after its metallic protest met my ears and—

-an explosion. A fake one, one inside my head, treading its way through barely lucid neurons. I teetered with the impact and the Doctor caught my arm.

"It worked! It worked, it worked! And you're doing this fabulous memory thing, and it's splendid, and, and you're fainting—" He patted my cheek forcefully. "Ah, there you go. What's there, now?"

I ignored the newfound thread of my life in those 8-bit images and pulled tightly to the one most prominent; a scene of me falling, falling, falling bare into an atmosphere of black.

"Doctor, I need you to help me take my gloves off."


	6. Speaking to Stars

"What did you see?" The Doctor asked.

"I saw things blow up. And there was…nothing at the end of it." I shook my head. "But these gloves." I shook them. "They're not right. They're why I'm sick." Half-truth, half-lie.

"What about them?"

"I can't…eat…with them on." It sounded silly. It sounded downright insane. But that was what was locked in the stone.

"You can't…eat? That doesn't make any sense. You ate just fine on the carrier ship."

"I never claimed that it did make sense. That's just what I'm told." I shook blonde hair out of my face. "You said I was naming constellations. Stars. It's all coming down to stars."

"What about stars?" The Doctor's excited expression had melted into one of concern.

"Eating stars." I whispered. I made a move to cross the TARDIS, but the Doctor roughly grabbed me by the arm. He pulled me to a stop and felt my forehead. "It's not burning, Doctor."

"Well then you must be completely off it, because you can't eat stars. They're _gas giants _for Maker's sake."

I shook him off. "I know that. I'm not _dull_." I continued across the deck, looking for a way out. "Gloves first. Can you or can't you get them off?"

He aimed his sonic screwdriver at my wrists and pressed a button. Immediately, a pattern of lights emerged on its surface…absorbing the emission?

"Now those are on tight." The Doctor's brow was furrowed with his focus.

"Well maybe they're on—"

"Shut up." He said dismissively, crossing and taking one glove in his hand. He turned it over, examining every centimeter of its surface. There wasn't much to see. Just black fabric, thicker than leather. Rings scored into my wrists. I hadn't stopped to think about it much earlier, but now that I did, it just seemed…perverse. "The screwdriver should unlock these. It should. But it didn't. It must be proofed against it, but who has that kind of technology?"

"Whoever locked me up in the first place, I imagine." We stood in silence a moment. "Doctor, why did you come for me with those men, at the request of a man you don't even know."

"I didn't come at his request." The Doctor glanced down at me briefly before testing the strength of the rings. I winced. "I came at my own."

"I'm sorry…what?"

"I got a letter from myself. Finding you was a fixed point in time. I had to come."

"And you couldn't have left yourself a hint about this?"

"Spoilers." He said with a half smile. It was the first completely genuine smile I'd seen him give, the most fond…and the most sad.

"Well that doesn't help us at all."

"Well then. What all have you seen about these?"

"They're not a part of me. They're…shameful for my kind. In fact…they're downright cruel." I shook them a little, felt skin tear. "A death sentence."

"Unless you're geographically connected to a brood of Angels." The Doctor mused. "Which you're not. So in essence, you're—"

"Starving." We made eye contact finally. It was grim.

"For stars."

"Yes."

"Yet it's an impossibility."

"Doctor, have you never run into a single thing in your existence that has managed to astound you?"

"Yes…"

"Then you've been prepared for another." I went to the nearest wall of the TARDIS, spanned my fingers across its cold metal surface. Felt the life flowing through its circuits. But mostly, I felt the void in the pit of my existence, felt the promise of galaxies upon galaxies outside. I rested my head against it then. "Let me out, Doctor."

"What?"

"Let me speak to them." The idea was a failing seed at the bottom of my skull, but it gave me the most _right _feeling since I had reawakened.

"Speak to who?"

"The stars. Any star."

"You're mad."

"Not yet, I'm not. If I'm…a star-eater…whatever that is, then there's no risk in letting me walk space. It should be built in."

"What if it's not?"

"Then you'll save me. Or I'll die quicker than having to wait around for starvation."

"I can't let you out of here, wibbly wobbly with sickness, on a chance that you were made for this. Frankly, I haven't seen anything like this before, and I find it dreadfully interesting. With a main course of dread."

I turned to face him.

"You led yourself here Doctor. To this point. This irreversibly, irrevocably fixed point in everything that ever can be and everything that ever will be. And you followed your letter in blind faith, trusting yourself to lead the way. I set a path for myself, too, Doctor. And this is where it's led. Two of us, impossibly, to the same fixed point. I intend to keep my path. I've got room in my life for just one more impossible thing." I wouldn't look away.

He didn't either. I didn't—couldn't—see the conflict in his face, but I knew he was weighing our options.

"Fine." He said simply. He walked to the control center, turned a few dials and cranks, and I felt us move. "But if you end up spontaneously combusting or turning into something entirely unflattering, remember whose doing it was."

It was just minutes, but it felt like an eternity until we stopped moving. My nerves felt like they were twisted and cut and aching. Dying and being born again. I was afraid.

"There you go, then." He gestured to the TARDIS door, which was now open, allowing us to gaze upon a small star—relatively small, which meant it was incredulously huge to us. "Try not to get killed. I don't know how you intend to converse with a big ball of gas, so don't feel insulted when it doesn't reply."

"That was there, too, in my head." I glanced back at him. "The language of the stars. It's been in my head since I was asleep. Since I was born. I didn't remember because I wasn't trying to…but it's the one thing I could never forget. It's real, Doctor." I paused. "And it's not that they'd never respond. It's that you'd never listen. My people…whoever we are…we're the last. The last to know the stars, to know their true names."

And I took that fateful step.

And I didn't die.

It was as if I was walking on earth. The feel of it wasn't, of course, but it was as if I could never float away. I had direction, purpose. And nothing could pull me anywhere I didn't want to go. And where I did want to go was to the star. So I did. I must have been travelling very fast, to reach it in such a short amount of time. I should have burnt, should have cried out in its ferocious light. Yet it seemed gentle, natural. I should have died. But by the time I was completely there, I didn't care.

I was enveloped. I fell in awe at first sight, this mass of life and ruin sitting in open space. I felt its consciousness. Its personality. Small star, yes, but it was old, so very old. And so very aware.

"Don't mind me." I said steadily. "You great thing, you. I've come to chat. Just chat. See, I'm in a great big fix. Someone's after me. Eaten my memories. Locked them away. But I know, I know I'm supposed to be someone else. Someone who knows your secrets. Will you speak to me…tell me what I need?"

The star shifted, casting its light onto me. And it spoke.


End file.
